Saturday, 12 March 2011

We don’t play many local gigs in and around Birmingham so I thought I would do a diary of our last one at the Flapper (from my perspective)

6am – as this weekend contains my birthday and due to the over indulgence of the night before I am up at this time as my body attempts to purge all the wrong things I inserted in it last night at The Actress and Bishop (then Standard International curry house)

8am – still sick I mean Linda Blair/Regan McNeil style sick!

10am – enter that “emotional” part of being hungover. I want more than anything to hug Antonio Carluccio from Saturday Kitchen. I resolve to feed Jen up and perm and grey her hair just for someone to hug.

11am – I am told of a wondrous sale at Cash Converters just up the road. Filled with all manner of things (one of them being a Saturday only sale of 50p a DVD) normally this would have me running for the door in a manner to quaff as many low price copies of 80s movies as I canNot on this day!

12pm – first cup of tea of the day (mmmm tea, giver of life)

2pm – pack car ready for rehearsal. Due to lack of focus + hangover + shrinking of brain cells it takes me half an hour to pack this much

4pm – Reherse for an hour just to make sure the set is tight and I can check that all my pedals are working in an almost obsessive way

5.30pm – Drive across to the studio. On the way we pass a shop called “Wine Lord”, so we then discuss other ideas for shops that sell alcohol which we could one day own such as “Scotch Overlord”, “Lager Baroness” and “Spirit Emperor”.

5:45 – Kill time by watching this vid on youtube

6:30 – Arrive at Flapper after wading through traffic of countless parents dropping their daughters off for the Justin Bieber concert over the road. Its a sea of pink neon leggings and oversized glasses!

6:35 – (At venue)Ahh the familiar sight of different bands dotted around a venue with their instruments awaiting sound check. Normally I would go straight up and introduce myself. Not today though as I am still coming to terms that (for today at least) there is far too much reality in the world for me to cope with.

7:30 – We sound check. We know the soundman and he has done the sound for us before. We are in good hands.During sound check I unlearn Falling and Laughing. This strikes fear into my very soul as Now ive thought about it so much that I have actually forgotten the Keyboard part. After sound check I plug the Keyboard into my amp and proceed to re-learn it.

7:45 – Fetch Jen to ask her if what I’ve re-learnt is the actual song or just a selection of notes I’ve made up that are out of key!

7:50 – Greet people (friends that have come to see us).

8:05 – We play a half hour set, The set went well however it was a subdued performance from me to be honest. Maybe because we were on first, maybe because I was still feeling a bit rough.

9:00 – Mill around in an out, sell cds to pissed people that ask for them. Obtain one lovely guy that whenever he sees me he wants to shake my hand(the handshakes soon give way to hugging)

9:30 - I try to convince Jens friend Steve that buying cowboy boots is a good idea. But only from Vegas. I then launch into my theory that a gentleman can get away with certain types of clothing in different country but not in the UK. (I can often be seen swanning around Paris in all manner of silly hats)

10:30 – Middleman lead the crowd in a rousing chant of “Fuck Justin Bieber”

11pm – Middleman instigate a huge tropical dance party on the stage of the Flapper.

11:30-1am – the rest of the nights events blur into one as we play pool against a bunch of Middleman fans, dance around to Nu-Metal and attempt to settle arguments over who gets copies of our single with handwritten lyrics and who doesn’t!

At around 1:15am we finally get booted out of the Flapper and make our way home.